WASHINGTON POST: For 42 years, she mourned at her son’s grave. Turns out, the coffin was empty.

Margaret Brazier, a professor at the University of Manchester, served as chairwoman of her country’s Retained Organs Commission, which met from 2001 to 2004 and was charged with overseeing the return of tissue and organs of the deceased involved to their families. She told The Post that the scandal revealed a huge divide between the medical community and patients.

Scientists, particularly pathologists, insisted they had acted in good faith, usually for research purposes. But some just couldn’t understand the outcry or why people “got so bothered by a corpse.”

“The remains were important to some people because of faith or they simply wanted their child buried whole,” Brazier said. “Cold rationality only takes you so far,” she said of the medical community. “You have to take into account how these individuals feel.”